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Skeptics of Christianity love to point out all the difficult passages in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. By noting these difficult passages, skeptics explicitly or implicitly imply that Christians are foolish (or even deranged) for worshiping the God described in the Old Testament.

My problem with this implication is that the number of difficult passages are dwarfed by the number of passages that clearly describe the greatness of God. These passages come in a wide variety and they are found all over the Old Testament. The skeptic’s approach is, therefore, totally unbalanced – it does not take into consideration the totality of Scripture.

So, to the skeptics who question why I worship the God described in the Old Testament, I offer these next few blog posts.

First, the Old Testament manifestly proclaims that God is wise. Norman Geisler explains in his Systematic Theology, Volume Two: God, Creation, “As applied to God, wisdom refers to His unerring ability to choose the best means to accomplish the best ends.” How does the Old Testament connect God and wisdom?

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Some people take the view that the Bible leads to a God who should be worshiped out of fear, especially in the Old Testament.

Surely we can agree that there is more than one path to a destination. Do you think fear is one such path that could be taken?

http://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/ Lothar Lorraine

The problem is that there is not one God of the Old Testament but many god(s), i.e. many conflicting descriptions of Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible.

Pointing out that the God of Jonah is worthy of our worhsip does nothing to show that the genocidal God of Joshua should be adored.

http://toughquestionsanswered.com Bill Pratt

What do you mean by “fear”?

http://toughquestionsanswered.com Bill Pratt

I couldn’t disagree more. The same God is presented consistently throughout all the books of the Bible. There simply aren’t any conflicts. My sense is that you don’t really try to deal with difficult passages in the Bible, but instead ignore them, claiming that the original authors are just wrong about how they portray God in those passages. That seems way too easy to me, as it doesn’t take seriously the fact that Jesus and his followers taught that the entire Hebrew Bible was God’s Word.

sean

Fear of his wrath. Fear of being punished for committing acts deemed sinful.

“My sense is that you don’t really try to deal with difficult passages in
the Bible, but instead ignore them, claiming that the original authors
are just wrong about how they portray God in those passages.”